Erased: The Untold Story of the Panama Canal

This book tells the story of the Panama Canal from the Panamanian point of view. Lasso recounts how the canal's American builders displaced 40,000 residents and erased entire towns in the guise of bringing modernity to the tropics.
Drawing on vast and previously untapped archival sources and personal recollections, Lasso describes the canal's displacement of peasants, homeowners, and shop owners, and chronicles the destruction of a centuries-old commercial culture and environment.
When the canal was finished, the U.S. engineered a tropical idyll to replace the lost cities and towns, but it was cleansed of poverty, unemployment, and people and was built exclusively for Americans.
Lasso restores the sounds, sights, and stories of a world wiped clean by U.S. commerce and political ambition and shares the contribution of Latin America to its own history.

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